13.
“I need to stop and pee,” I said. The clock on the dash read 4:45, and I assumed AM, since it was still pitch black outside. There was a glow on the horizon suggesting there was a town up there, and I was still letting Harry do his thing in silence, because I didn’t have much to say until now.
“I know,” Harry said. “There’s an all-night gas station two miles ahead, just through the town. We’re getting on the freeway after that.”
“Oh?” I asked, peering into the dark ahead, as though I could see this mythical town ahead around the bend. “What’s the town called?”
“Ardmore,” Harry said.
That meant nothing to me. I’d been all over the country, but only spent a little time in Alabama. “Wait, did you say we’re getting on the freeway?” I turned to him. “I thought you said that was a no-no?”
“The I-75 and I-95 corridors are being watched pretty hard,” Harry said casually, steering the car into a slight curve. Woods surrounded us on either side, and the SUV’s heater chugged to give us warmth. “But this is I-65, and the Department of Homeland Security isn’t God—their eyes aren’t everywhere at once. Or, in this case, police patrols aren’t elevated here—yet.” He gave me a warning look, one that I took to mean, So don’t do anything stupid to cause them to elevate.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, your earlier fears appear to be unfounded. You didn’t say anything there and I felt I learned something anyway.” He smirked.
A few minutes later we pulled into Ardmore and into a gas station. I didn’t see any sign of the freeway, but it was probably ahead somewhere. This was a smallish town, complete with various storefronts and some restaurants. I saw a Mexican one that looked intriguing, but unfortunately it wasn’t open at 5 AM.
I popped out of the car while Harry quietly woke Cassidy and Eilish with an announcement that we were stopping for a bathroom break. While he was doing that, I swiped the credit card Reed had given me for gas and other contingencies and then started the tank to filling. That done, I followed Cassidy and Eilish in staggering toward the store. Well, Cassidy staggered. Eilish composed herself a little better.
Cassidy stumbled through the front door and didn’t even wait to hold it for me. I caught it nonetheless, not overdoing it on the metahuman power display, but having to hustle a little to keep it from shutting right in my face. Cassidy had paused just inside the door, her thin frame blocking the entry as she scanned the store. Finally her head turned and eyes alighted on the “Restroom” sign and off she went again, looking like she was the one who’d downed half a bottle of scotch, not me.
I followed behind her, walking past the beer cooler. The light within was off, shading all the Budweisers and Millers and all else in darkness that wasn’t exactly complete. I smacked my lips together as I went by, almost running into Cassidy again just outside the women’s room, which was in a little corridor off the store.
She was rattling the door handle, staring at it stupidly as though it would open if she just pulled a little more. “What the hell?” she mumbled, like she had a mouth full of cotton.
“Eilish is in there,” I explained, then had to tug her skinny arm away before she busted it with her meta strength. Cassidy may have looked like a stick figure, but I’d tangled with her, and while she was on the low end of meta physical abilities, she could still level a three-hundred-pound human linebacker with minimal effort.
“Oh.” Cassidy looked up at me, and I realized her comprehension must have been running at incredibly low levels. She had dark circles under her eyes, making her look a little like a drug addict when coupled with her natural paleness. I tried to recall the time and remembered it was nearing five in the morning. Cassidy turned back to staring at the bathroom door dully, waiting for Eilish to exit. Finally, apparently in frustration, she turned to the men’s room and tried that handle. It opened immediately, and in she went, locking it behind her with a heavy click, still seeming like a zombie.
The lady’s room door opened a few seconds later and Eilish came out, looking a little better than Cassidy in terms of how put together she was. She yawned right in my face as she held the door for me, and I went in as she said, “Might want to not sit down.” I looked at her blankly, and she elaborated: “Trust me.”
When I got inside, I found she wasn’t wrong. Someone did not care to do janitorial work in this particular bathroom, so I held my nose and got finished quickly, never daring to touch the seat. When I finished, I washed my hands and avoided looking in the mirror, continuing a habit I’d been embracing since Scotland. I caught a flash of my dyed-blond hair and sunken cheeks, and that was all I needed to see. Onward.
I popped out into the store to find Eilish with her arms full of junk food. “And you,” she said, grabbing a bag of Cheetos off the shelf to add to the pile she was already carrying like a chipmunk readying herself for winter. Even though winter was getting close to done, at least in this part of the country. She passed the candy display. “Ooh,” she said, snatching up a Snickers bar. “And you …”
I wandered over to the beer cooler and away from her junk food mission. I didn’t need any of that. I paused next to a display advertising a forty-ounce malt liquor that sounded intriguing, even though I had to kind of squint to see it with the cooler lights off. I doubted it had the flavor of a good scotch, but it was just before 5 AM, and I wasn’t feeling picky, so I grabbed a six pack and headed toward the counter.
There was an older, heavyset woman standing back there with her arms folded, just watching us. She shifted her attention to me as I came up and put the malt liquor on the counter.
“Oh, honey,” she said, coming up to the counter. Her nametag said she was “Joan.” “I can’t sell you this.”
I was feeling pretty good until that happened, when suddenly I got a little cross. “Why the hell not?”
She blinked a little at my reaction. “It’s Sunday, doll.”
My eye twitched when she called me “doll.” “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
Joan took a step back. “Now … you just settle on down now. It’s Sunday. You can’t buy alcoholic beverages here on Sunday. At least not until after noon.”
I blinked. I paused. I took a breath. “Why the f—” I took another breath.
“It’s against the law,” she said, looking at me over half-moon specs.
The door bell jangled, and someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned and looked.
It was Harry, and he was looking not so subtly at me.
I sighed. Apparently I’d been about to cause the sort of scene he’d explicitly warned me against in the car.
I pressed my lips together, my mouth all dry, and said, “Fair enough,” grabbed the malt liquor, and headed back toward the cooler. I put it inside gently, trying to keep from tossing it so hard it sprang a leak, and then beelined for the door. Eilish was at the counter, a mountain of junk food in front of her, as Joan stared down at all the crap she was about to buy with a jaded eye, like she’d seen a hell of a lot worse than this gluttonous rampage. “And … maybe some of these,” Eilish said, ransacking a plastic case filled with beef sticks on the counter.
“Nice recovery,” Harry said once we were outside, under the fluorescent glow of the overhead lights.
“This is bullshit,” I said, stalking back toward the car. “I bet I could buy cigarettes today, no problem. Or lotto tickets. Damn you, Sunday.”
“Well, you should probably moderate your vices,” Harry said amiably. “You want some lotto tickets? Or some cigs? I mean, they’re hell on humans, but all they’ll do to you is make you stink like flaming dog crap.”
I turned and gave him a withering glare. “No, I do not want to smell like flaming dog crap, thank you very much.” He wasn’t wrong; the smell of cigarettes held an extra aroma of stink to the finely tuned meta senses. I couldn’t stand to be around a smoker for very long without wanting to kill them and toss their body off the nearest bridge just to be rid of the smell.
That … might have been the alcohol craving talking. Or maybe not.
The door to the station swung open and out came Cassidy, looking much more alert and awake. “Come on, come on,” she said, gesturing to us. “We should get going.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “We’re not going anywhere until Eilish gets done paying for her stuff.” I nodded at Eilish, who I could see through the window talking to Joan, who was watching her with one eye cocked curiously while ringing up the plethora of junk foods. She picked up a pack of Twinkies and rang them, nodding at something Eilish was saying.
“Does she have any money?” Harry asked.
“Uh …” I tried to think about it. It wasn’t like Eilish worked, and I didn’t know if Reed had given her any money before leaving. “Uhm …”
“Rhetorical question, Sienna,” Harry said. “You might want to go take care of that before she causes a scene by shoplifting. Because she will get caught. That Joan is no spring daffodil. She’s seen some shit in her time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, grumbling and heading back into the store.
“Have fun,” Cassidy said, a little too singsongy for my taste. I gave her a look as I went inside.
“That’ll be … two hundred eighty five dollars and ninety three cents,” Joan said as I let the door swing closed behind me.
Eilish’s mouth dropped open, but I’d known her long enough to know that it was all an act. She was faking outrage, and I got a bad feeling as to why. “That’s outrageous! I won’t p—”
“I’ll pay,” I said, brandishing my credit card.
Eilish started to say something to me, then shrugged. “She’ll pay,” she said to Joan, a little smile of self-satisfaction spreading across her face.
I stepped up to the counter and slipped my card into the card reader. “You were just about to cause a scene,” I muttered, meta-low.
“What? No,” Eilish said. “I was going to grab a little something for the road and leave this bird scratching her head and restocking shelves for a bit, that’s all.”
“Harry says there was about to be trouble,” I said, still talking uber low. Joan was looking around, the bag in her hand half-filled with Eilish’s absurd number of junk food purchases. “You were going to get caught.
“Y’all hear that buzzing sound?” Joan stared at the ceiling. “I think one of these fluorescent lights is about to go bad.”
“Better call maintenance,” I said, grabbing the receipt as it printed before Joan could. I signed it, completely illegibly, and handed it back.
Joan gave me a half-assed scowl, more disappointed than bemused. “I am maintenance, doll. Night shift, you do anything you have to.”
“Maybe it’ll fix itself,” I said, trying to be cool as I grabbed the first bag of junk food. It was not light. “Could just be a power surge.”
“Maybe,” she said, a crease forming between her eyebrows as she finished bagging the fifth(!) bag of Eilish’s junk food. I couldn’t tell whether she was politely choosing not to argue with me or she just knew I was full of crap and she’d been hearing the faint hiss of us talking meta low. “I guess it stopped.”
“Hmm,” I said, stringing the damned junk food bags along my arms while Eilish loaded up her own. How the hell had she managed to get all this to the counter without bags? “Welp … have a good night.”
“Damned near morning now,” Joan said as I went for the door. “Oh, you want a copy of your receipt?”
“No,” I said, “I think all this crap is plenty enough reminder for me about what I spent.” And I turned and walked out, Eilish a few steps behind me.
“I was not about to cause a scene,” Eilish hissed once the door had slammed shut behind us. Joan was still looking around at the ceiling within, as though she could locate that mysterious sound just by staring long enough.
“Harry says you were,” I said. “How would he know about it if he didn’t see it come through in a prediction?”
“He’s probably making stuff up,” Eilish said. The hatchback of the SUV popped open, and I realized Harry was opening it for us.
I dumped my bags of junk food into the back of the SUV while Eilish discarded all but one of hers, after making some strategic switches into the one she kept. Part of me wanted to look, the other part of me didn’t want to know, but I grabbed a Snickers anyway and peeled the wrapping off and started to eat it.
“Hey, that’s mine,” Eilish said.
“Technically, this is all mine,” I said, waving a hand to encompass the enormous trick-or-treat result that filled the SUV’s hatchback, “but I’ll let you steal some, don’t worry.”
Eilish made a frown, and then made her way to the door again, following behind me. “Can I at least sit up front this time?”
“No.”
She grunted and got in the back seat as I got in the front, and Harry started the engine. “There’s a Waffle House a few miles ahead,” he said. “I’m stopping for breakfast.”
Eilish was halfway into an Oatmeal Creme pie. “We’re stopping for breakfast? That would have been good to know before I bought all this!”
I rolled my eyes. “Why are you upset? You’re not even down a dollar.”
“Well, I went through the trouble of hauling all that to the counter, did you see? It was like ten trips.”
I looked back at her, and caught a glimpse of Cassidy bobbing, little wireless earbuds in her ears as she tapped away at a computer screen. I turned all the way around so I could look right at Eilish. She had a piece of brown Oatmeal Creme pie on her lip. “No thieving, you hear me?” I made my voice emphatic. “The last thing we need is to get in trouble with the law because you wanted a stick of peppermint gum, okay? If you want something, I’ll buy it.”
“With your brother’s credit card,” Eilish said softly.
“Well, I’m kind of the one who financed his venture, so … it’s sort of my money, too,” I said. I hadn’t been able to access my own money yet, really, save for a quick bank transfer to Cassidy once I’d gotten back to the States. I’d lost eighty percent of my fortune thanks to that damned Scot bitch. I still had a sizable fortune under my control in the Cayman Islands, but I didn’t know if the feds had found that money yet, and I didn’t want to transfer or make any withdrawals that might lead to me.
So, I used Reed’s money. And that was totally cool and only slightly driving me nuts.
“Next stop, Waffle House,” Harry said, pulling the car out of the parking lot as I turned around and sat back down. My stomach gave a low rumble. He looked sidelong at me. “Way to turn around your own intemperate response, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I said, the only buffer between me and a rather extreme headache being the ibuprofen he’d given me earlier. I kept from snapping at him, though. “No alcohol on Sundays? What kind of bullshit is that, Harry?”
“Uh, that’d be the law in many states,” he said. “Including your own, until recently.”
“What?” I frowned. After a moment’s reflection, I realized … yeah, that could have been true. It wasn’t like I had ever really gone out to buy booze on Sundays when I lived in Minnesota. “Maybe,” I finally conceded.
As the car pulled back out onto the highway, rolling through Ardmore, it made me think of how things had been back then, when I’d lived a normal life, unencumbered by countless law enforcement agencies hunting me, and I’d had all the power in the world.
It was almost like another life, one I could only look back on now through a dark prism I called Scotland. If everything in my world could be divided into “Before” and “After,” there was a giant black smudge in the middle marking the space between, and staining everything that had come after.
Though, really … I wasn’t sure quite where to demarcate the end of “Before.” Maybe it wasn’t in Scotland. Maybe it when I’d exploded in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, killing a whole heap ton of meta prisoners that had meant to kill me (and scared a ton of reporters out of their damned skins, turning them against me) that I’d lost my freedom. When I’d had to start running, like I was Dr. Richard Kimble, but with superhuman powers. And pretty. I thought I’d hit rock bottom after that.
But then … Scotland. Where I’d lost … everything I had left.
I put those thoughts out of my head, shaking them off. Before? After? None of it really mattered. My life was in the state it was in, and reflecting over the wreckage didn’t seem too prudent. It was liking look back at the road behind. What the hell was the point? Other than a farewell view of Ardmore—and maybe a glimpse of Cassidy now that she was peppy or Eilish as she stuffed her face with junk food—there was nothing behind me that I could change. Nothing that would make the present better.
But as I stared out at the road ahead, I had to wonder if there was anything I could change before me, either? Before, when I’d had power, the ability to influence the outcome of a situation like this was never in doubt. But now …
Was there even any hope?
Or was it all darkness, from here to the horizon, more grim surprises that would only be revealed and do further damage to my life as I came upon them?